Showing results by publisher "Wordwooze Publishing" in Crime Fiction

Even as a child, Katlyn Lundquist was drop-dead gorgeous. She also was willful. In her teens, perhaps out of spite, she created her own name and persona. As she grew up, she readily accepted money and gifts from her parents but thumbed her nose at society and her parent's way of life. A seeming infatuation with Tommie Lupinacci, head of a major crime-infested cartage association based in Brooklyn, led her to move east with the mobster. But when she showed up dead with a bullet in the back of her head, NYPD Detectives Louis Martelli and Sean O'Keeffe were stumped.  

A hot-tempered, very neglected Mafia wife. Her 18-year-old lover in a black leather jacket with switchblade. Her missing "Made Man" husband who had been playing fast and loose with pay-offs collected for the local Capo de Capos. A dozen juvenile delinquents who were ready to rumble and just as ready to harmonize when record producers dropped by. Two tough-as-nails cops convinced that Harry Horne was guilty of everything. And a young woman with a penchant for shedding her clothes and trying to shoot Harry. It all adds up to one of journalist/sleuth Harry Horne's craziest cases.

McHugh's back, drunk, and locked deep in a Mexican jail while the clock ticks down to doomsday! Someone is planning an international incident that would set off a revolution in one of the US's closest South of the border allies, plus provoke a shooting war between the US and Mexico - and it's up to McHugh, the two-fisted secret agent who always travels with a briefcase containing a fifth of Scotch and a .45, to stop it.

Stellan, a married mid-20s Chicago accountant, dreams of a new life free from a spiteful wife and two unruly young daughters. His salvation comes by way of mobster Dusan “Squeezebox” Kovačević. Stellan stumbles onto a cache of $2.1 million hidden beneath loose floorboards at Squeezebox’s warehouse. He at first resists the temptation, but it proves too tempting. He plots out his theft, and, under the cover of darkness, bolts with the money in his trunk. 

He can out shoot, out think, out fight, and out love any other secret agent on the planet - get out of the way James Bond before your tux gets rumpled! McHugh lands a Caribbean island assignment: Stir up a revolution, topple the world's most brutal dictator, smash the secret police whose methods start with torture and get a lot worse from there, help the revolutionaries, and stop the revolution before it goes too far in the other direction. It's just another days' work for McHugh.

When a sexy nudist hires him to protect her from whoever is threatening her life, Nick Bancroft becomes the target. Someone tries to burn him alive, beats the hell out of him, and, since that didn't run him off, uses him for target practice. Meanwhile, two people are murdered, Nick's true love, Maggie Atley, is more than somewhat perturbed by his relationship with his client, and a mysterious club seems to hold the answer. Nick survives another losing season by his beloved Chicago Cubs, a vicious attack by a couple of huge dogs, and eventually puts the finger on the bad guys.  

McHugh, the world's toughest spy, is on an assignment that spells triple trouble! Trouble #1 begins at the bar he owns to cover his espionage activities, called The Door. And it’s the door to death for the stranger he finds dying just outside with a shiv in his guts. McHugh doesn't like corpses on his doorstep, so he starts to back-track on the stranger, which leads him to a round, ripe, terrified girl, wearing narrow chino pants. There is puzzlement in her eyes, then recognition, then panic. Then the whole house falls in on McHugh!

The 1960s' toughest, brainiest, sexiest, and most compassionate spy, is back in print! Meet McHugh America's#1 Secret Agent a combination of Mickey Spillaine's Mike Hammer and Ian Flemming's James Bond. In this first book in the series, McHugh takes a leave of absence from his spy work to help out his lover's sister who has found a dead Mafioso in her apartment, her boyfriend missing, and half San Francisco's mobsters after her.

Who was the mysterious girl that danced with the Angevin Crown Prince at the Buda Castle ball, then dashed off leaving behind nothing but a high-heeled shoe? Down the mean streets of Eighteenth-Century Budapest walks Ferenc Marlowe, failed revolutionary and pioneer private detective. Hired by the Prince to find the missing girl, Marlowe finds himself caught up in a tangled web of court intrigue, dynastic conspiracies and low morals in high places.

Due to the sensitive nature of my profession, I am known simply as Mr. J. I have the unique ability to analyze people, places, and things in such a way as to be able to determine what would, should, can, could come next. In a way, I can predict the future. I first developed this ability while watching chess games in the park when I was 12 years old and soon was able to predict the moves and the winners of several games at the same time. Before graduating from high school, I was being utilized as an “unknown” source helping to solve cases for the local police.

There’s been a burglary in a luxury high rise co-op in Manhattan: an elderly woman was assaulted in her apartment, with jewelry taken. The prime suspect is Johnny Jones, who was in the building around the same time, helping his lawyer, public defender Alan Goldman, move temporarily into the apartment of his friend, corporate lawyer Tim Wilson. But another suspect soon emerges: a look-alike intruder who got into the building through a basement door with a broken lock. The victim is suing the co-op for millions, represented by her niece, litigator Cathy Collins - Tim’s ex-girlfriend.

When a wealthy Wall Street commodity futures trader is found dead in his townhouse of an apparent drug overdose, Deputy Coroner Michael Antonetti, NYPD, is suspicious. Antonetti tells Detective Louis Martelli he suspects what appears to be a suicide may in fact be murder. After a similar case is discovered involving a former friend of the Wall Street trader who played on the same high school football team almost twenty years earlier, Martelli is convinced he is dealing with someone bent on revenge.

Blood ties. The family we’ve been given, the friends we make, the loves we keep, and those we lost. The 26 stories in Family and Other Ailments teeter on the brink, hover at the periphery, or even the possibility, of crime. Under a soft light and at an angle, they're all love stories. The collection opens with “Spy Head”, a tale of friendship after a crushing trauma. In “Texas Two-Step”, brotherhood leads to a wicked double-cross. “Razorbills” shows a young woman seeking freedom from the prison-like caring of her sibling.

George Barrett is a detective in the Sioux Bend Police Department. For the first time in six years, George and his family are going on vacation to the most exclusive resort in the west—Moonlight Cove Resort in Wild River, Wyoming. The first morning there, George and his daughter, Karen, go for a run. Near the end of the trail, Karen hears music. When she follows the sound, she discovers two young people tied to pine trees, with arrows in their stomachs. One victim was the son of the Lakota County sheriff and the other was the daughter of the executive director of Moonlight Cove.

Joel Marcus, a young, successful Manhattan DA, stuck in a loveless marriage, is with his beautiful DA girlfriend when he rescues an elderly Haitian woman from muggers. She rewards him with a voodoo ceremony. Now when he dies, his spirit will survive and pass into the one nearest him. When he is, in fact, soon murdered, his spirit does pass into the one nearest him: the Black hitman who murdered him. While trying to convince loved ones he's still alive, he's being sought by the police as the prime suspect in his own murder.

Granville Cash served 14 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. After finally being exonerated, he is awarded a great deal of money for his wrongful conviction. With more time and money than he knows what to do with, he decides to help a friend from prison find his missing daughter. Trouble is, no one has seen or heard from the woman in years. Cash begins combing the streets of Atlanta, tracking down her last known associates, primarily whores, pimps, junkies, and drug dealers, but the path leads, surprisingly, to some of the city's most respected businesspeople.

Jack Lewis had been in prison for 15 years, but today was the day he got out on parole. After the bus dropped him off, he was met by his best friend, Charlie Walker, now a deputy sheriff. Charlie offered Jack a ride. When he asked, “Where to?” Jack’s reply stunned him: “Gull Cove.” Upon entering his house, Jack discovered a girl named Tamika asleep on the couch—his sister's daughter. While the two siblings got reacquainted, Tamika played pool, but the balls kept getting stuck. This prompted Jack to reach into the ball return, where he discovered a bloodstained glove.

Mike Lanson was the ace crime reporter for the Gazette, so it was natural that he heard about the kookie wino who had reported eavesdropping on two men plotting a murder. So, it was also natural that he got on the case after one of the two plotters was found dead. Mike, like all reporters, was looking for an answer. But when he filled in the five W's on the next victim, he came up with this: Who: Mike Lanson. What: His own murder. When: As soon as that fire reached the explosives. Where: In a deserted storehouse. Why: Because he knew too much. 

Equine veterinary technician Walter Watson was working in a prestigious practice in Colts Neck, New Jersey when he makes a terrible discovery. His boss, famed equine surgeon Dr. John Hansen, is involved with a group of men committing a multimillion-dollar fraud killing racehorses in order to collect insurance money. Just before Walter can expose the scam, he is murdered. However, he is reincarnated as a thoroughbred racehorse colt.

Following the death of his estranged brother Tim, Riley Greenham is forced to return to his hometown of Madden. Riley learns that Tim died as a result of a severe heart condition.